What is the best version of BASIC for the ST for general purpose questions?

[lp060]

The latest version of GFA is 3.6 and if you don't mind reading PDFs checkout: https://docs.dev-docs.org/

See 'out of print books' link.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by lp060

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Welcome to atarisaurus forum ? I never heard about Microsoft Basic for Atari ST. Looked at atarimania - nope.  So, where can get it, look about details ?

I can google, but this time would like to get direct link(s).

Btw. not sure that Microsoft is much popular in this waters ?

[mellis]

1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Welcome to atarisaurus forum ? I never heard about Microsoft Basic for Atari ST. Looked at atarimania - nope.  So, where can get it, look about details ?

I can google, but this time would like to get direct link(s).

Btw. not sure that Microsoft is much popular in this waters ?

I've used STs since 1986, and I have never heard of Microsoft Basic being released for it.

[Ayreon]

The Tramiels where pretty successful at keeping MS away from the ST.

The 8-bits had a version of MS basic and Amiga basic was by MS.

By the looks of it the ST only got "Write" from MS and I don't know anyone who used that.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Ayreon said:

By the looks of it the ST only got "Write" from MS and I don't know anyone who used that.

I've used it!   As a curiosity mostly,  my friend had it and gave it to me.   It was kinda cool to have something like Word running on my ST, but I don't remember actually using it to write anything.

[calimero]

On 10/9/2020 at 2:24 PM, Ayreon said:

The Tramiels where pretty successful at keeping MS away from the ST.

The 8-bits had a version of MS basic and Amiga basic was by MS.

By the looks of it the ST only got "Write" from MS and I don't know anyone who used that.

Jack Tramiel explained how and why he do a business with Bill Gates at “Commdodore 64 aniversary” at arround 30 minutes...

 

 

btw

MS Write for ST was even better than for DOS (e.g.you could open up to four documents at once) but it was slow and slugish since it access floppy a lot. It was cleary not elegant like Tempus or any other textprocesor on ST. Microsoft Write simple could not compete with rest of textrpocesor on ST. 
 

and on topic:

I was using Omicron Basic back in 80s (there was a book in serbo-croatian) and later GFA Basic. 

Edited October 21, 2020 by calimero

[jefffulton]

On 9/2/2020 at 2:14 PM, lp060 said:

The latest version of GFA is 3.6 and if you don't mind reading PDFs checkout: https://docs.dev-docs.org/

See 'out of print books' link.

 

Have you ever seen an English Language 3.5 or 3.6 (or even a 3.0) manual for GFA?

[lp060]

On 11/18/2020 at 3:08 PM, jefffulton said:

Have you ever seen an English Language 3.5 or 3.6 (or even a 3.0) manual for GFA?

Had the entire English v3.5 manual scanned at one point and then lost it when the SSD hard drive bricked.

Edited December 20, 2020 by lp060

[Dmitry]

On 5/5/2016 at 3:19 AM, atarifanboi said:

I've become interested in programming on the ST, and I'm looking for some recommendations as to what is the best general purpose programming version of BASIC that I can use.

 

Also, if there are any recommendations around possible alternatives to BASIC, I'd be happy to hear your opinions.

 

Thanks all.

I notice nobody said pick up a copy of OSS Personal Pascal, that's disappointing! ha....back in the day, when the ST came out, I decided not to continue on with Basic.

I bought my machine with OSS Personal Pascal as a day 1 purchase...I came close to buying C instead.  I'm sure I picked it based on the advertisement for it had some exciting wording on it.  

 

I recall OSS Personal Pascal was decent for writing GEM applications back in the day, at least I found the documentation to take me step by step through implementing menus and such.

 

My magnum opus was a computer aided teaching system on using the dewey decimal system.

 

You didn't mention what you were writing, but if you are looking to do writing computer aided learning tutorials - then you asked the right guy - pick up a copy of OSS Personal Pascal  haha....ah...no.  OK. I'll go stand in the corner.

 

 

 

 

[Tillek]

On 11/19/2020 at 10:34 AM, lp060 said:

Had the entire English v3.6 manual scanned at one point and then lost it when the SSD hard drive bricked.

Is there a scanned 3.5 out there?  And if so, is it much different than 3.6 in terms of commands/syntax?

[lp060]

10 hours ago, Tillek said:

Is there a scanned 3.5 out there?  And if so, is it much different than 3.6 in terms of commands/syntax?

Rescued a broken HP all-in-one that doesn't print anymore, but the scanner part works fine. Spent the time to re-scan the material. The manual says v3.0 on the cover but there's a chapter about v3.5. Scanned the v3.5 compiler manual as well. Then made them searchable.
Can find them at https://docs.dev-docs.org/
 

Regarding v3.6, it added support for TT030 video modes, meaning the editor itself would function in those modes and limited FPU support. Also a couple of new commands. There's a read me file on the v3.6 disk, but it seems to be incomplete. Does anyone have some v3.6 addendum pages laying around?

 

Merry Christmas. ???

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by lp060

[zzip]

On 12/18/2020 at 5:23 PM, Dmitry said:

I notice nobody said pick up a copy of OSS Personal Pascal, that's disappointing! ha....back in the day, when the ST came out, I decided not to continue on with Basic.

I bought my machine with OSS Personal Pascal as a day 1 purchase...I came close to buying C instead.  I'm sure I picked it based on the advertisement for it had some exciting wording on it.  

 

I recall OSS Personal Pascal was decent for writing GEM applications back in the day, at least I found the documentation to take me step by step through implementing menus and such.

Back then, It seemed like if you wanted to do serious development for the ST, you used C.

 

I actually learned Pascal in school, and they taught us that "Pascal is just a teaching language used to teach concepts,  nobody uses it for serious work in the real world".   So then once I entered the "real world",  I was hired because I had Pascal listed on my resume and was given a job maintaining a real world Pascal application.   Haha.

 

Anyway, because school planted that seed in my mind about Pascal,  I never seriously considered using Personal Pascal for development,  I was using GFA while trying to teach myself C.   I probably could've hit the ground running with PP instead. 

[ggn]

Regarding Pascal, nowdays you can use Free Pascal (which as of recently has TOS support: https://www.freepascal.org). For a live demo check out https://tinyurl.com/y7cbmwdn

[Lynxpro]

On 10/21/2020 at 12:38 AM, calimero said:

 

btw

MS Write for ST was even better than for DOS (e.g.you could open up to four documents at once) but it was slow and slugish since it access floppy a lot. It was cleary not elegant like Tempus or any other textprocesor on ST. Microsoft Write simple could not compete with rest of textrpocesor on ST. 
 

and on topic:

I was using Omicron Basic back in 80s (there was a book in serbo-croatian) and later GFA Basic. 

 

Microsoft courted Atari Corp in the early days of the ST's development to use Windows instead of GEM but Microsoft was a good 2+ years out in shipping it. I seem to recall Atari Corp choosing their standard for CD-ROM data in the ST's CD-ROM Drive - in the very early days of CD-ROM industry evangelism - that was horribly delayed. So Microsoft probably didn't make a competitive offer - as opposed to Metacomco - to have a version of their 68000-based Microsoft BASIC become Atari Corp's official ST BASIC version. On the Amiga side of things, they had Commodore's already existing contract with Microsoft for BASIC plus even before their acquisition, Amiga Corp was planning on using Microsoft BASIC since their contract with Atari Inc specified that they'd use an "Applesoft" compatible BASIC which was Microsoft BASIC, of course. It's too bad Atari Corp - and Atari Inc before them - just didn't contract with OSS to port "Atari BASIC" to the 68000.

 

As for Microsoft Write, it was expensive compared to First Word Plus. Most of the talk amongst the ST folks in the local users group was that one might as well buy WordPerfect then, even though it was probably twice the price. Unless my memory is completely shot, I seem to remember Federated bundling Microsoft Write with some of the "package deals" they sold the Mega STs in. That was during Atari Corp's ownership of that chain until its bitter end.